


On the Nature of Warmth

by Anonymous



Series: Cosmic Chronicles [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Forgiveness, Pre-Season Five, Slow Burn, Strangulation, Strangulation (Mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 08:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17863955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Nothing comes to be or perishes.- Empedocles





	On the Nature of Warmth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xoloveleonie_ss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xoloveleonie_ss/gifts), [DistractedPadawan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DistractedPadawan/gifts), [erinmaryan4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinmaryan4/gifts).



> Title inspired by Karl Friedrich Mohr’s article _Über die Natur der Wärme_ (1837) on the law of conservation of energy.  
>    
>  For Erin, Jess, and Leo..

~*~

Despite Raven’s accusations of being dropped like a hot brick, the reality is that it takes nearly a year for Echo to formally move into Bellamy’s room.

( _Our room_, he reminds her time and time again for many, many weeks after. It’s only when the rest of the crew join in—some Pavlovian group effort no doubt orchestrated by none other than Bellamy himself—that Echo consciously begins to call it _theirs_.)

Before that, it took three years.

~*~

It starts with a chaste kiss.

Echo’s the one who leans in to press her—such soft—lips to the corner of his mouth.

It’s the first time she tastes anyone else’s tears.

~*~

They don’t speak for nearly a week after that. Echo believes she’s overstepped and doesn’t know how to make amends, so she hovers uncertainly on the periphery of every conversation he’s engaged in. Meanwhile Bellamy struggles to accept he might not have compartmentalised his feelings as well as he’d thought.

After getting an earful from Raven while being stuck in a ventilation shaft doing her bidding, Bellamy strolls into the main room and taps Echo’s shoulder as he walks by, “I need to fight.”

It’s not just Raven’s words that have him on edge, but the fact of being trapped in a narrow space for half a day-cycle. He feels ants crawling beneath his skin and a tightness in his muscles he needs to shake off.

Only when he pins Echo to the ground with two hands around her throat, does he realise the fight isn’t helping. She stares up at him with widened eyes, her lips trembling. She’s terrified of him in that moment.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, relinquishing her throat with delayed urgency. He shouldn’t have done that. He knows she’s no longer the enemy. It’s been years since the conclave. _Years_. Except it all feels fresh because they’ve never spoken about it and the memory of her lips pressing softly against his has shaken the foundation upon which he built the dam that contains _all things Echo_. Like a deer caught in the headlights, he can only gape as the flood of pent-up everything washes over him.

Bellamy doesn’t move from where he’s straddling her stomach, stunned by the violence it’s led him to commit against someone who’s done nothing but prove herself time and time again. The fact that they _can_ fight without intent to harm or kill one another is evidence of just how much has transpired since. Things have changed. Trust, despite what he’d once told her, had been built. Three years of teamwork to build a bridge that he might just have broken with his bare hands within a fraction of a second.

Echo doesn’t take the lead despite the ease with which she could. His hands are limp across his thighs, his shoulders bowed forward as he stares down at them. If she wanted to, she could toss him aside like a ragdoll. (Like she has done so many times before). An opportunity like that should never be passed up. Hell, _she_ taught him that.

Bellamy almost wishes she would. He knows she has it in her. The fact that she’s not acting upon the very tenets she’s instilled in him is unnerving. This doesn’t have to change things. It _doesn’t_. All she has to do is kick him off and comment on his lack of focus. Alternatively she could throw him off, call it a day, and walk away.

He hazards a glance at her, noticing the inconsistent press of her ribcage against his knees.

Her chest is heaving.

Her throat is beaded with sweat.

(Will his fingerprints linger like evidence at the scene of a crime?)

Her chin quivers despite the tension in her jaw.

Her lips tremble.

Her cheeks gleam—sweat and overhead fluorescents.

Her eyes. Her eyes are watery and glazed.

Her gaze is pointedly fixed on the ceiling.

“Echo, I’m sor—.”

Contained for too long the pressurized sob wracks her body—violently.

Bellamy feels the jolt of it course through her torso with the inseam of his thighs. He notices the barely-contained shudder loosen the tears from her lower lashes, and watches as they tumble out the edges of her eyes and disappear into her sweat-beaded hairline. The hollows of her throat deepen as she fights it. He _knows_ he shouldn’t be witnessing this moment. He _knows_ he should accept responsibility and fold. This isn’t the moment to be stubborn. If it were him like this, she’d...

If it were him like this, she’d… Echo would… _Echo_ would, but he can’t.

He can’t.

What he does instead is push himself to his feet and offer her his hand.

What he does is grip her forearm and pull her to her feet. It’s a repeat.

They’ve done this before.

 _This_ Bellamy can do for her.

 _In spite_ of the things she’s done down there.

 _Because_ of the things she’s done since they came up here to the ring.

Bellamy can’t kiss her tears away, but he can wipe them away. His hold on her forearm is steadfast despite her feet finding the ground. With his free hand he swipes at her temples with his thumb.

“I’m sorry, Echo,” he says.

It doesn’t matter how often he has said it; it doesn’t feel like enough. There’s something else he should say. There’s something else he needs to tell her, but he finds himself unable to find the words amidst the flood of memories at the forefront of his brain.

He realises then, with a pained twist of his gut, that he might be on the verge of crying as well. The thought of Octavia it...

...it’s fresh. It was fresh last week when they marked their third year on the ring. It’s still fresh today. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep, shuddery breath. It’s hard to swallow around the lump in his throat.

Bellamy got there in time _that_ time—at the conclave, but now... Now he doesn’t know if it was worth it. (Of course it was, he admonishes. People were saved, his sister was saved.) He doesn’t know anymore though, what he should believe. (What if the bunker only prolonged her death? What if she died slowly, blistering and in pain?) He’s caught in this loop of uncertainty, worsened by the radio’s static of his daily check-in.

He wipes Echo’s temple again—despite the tears not streaming down her cheeks. He looks down from the spot on the wall over her head and feels the tears trickle from his lower lashes. (He wonders, half-heartedly, whether she would’ve tried to kiss him again had he not just triggered one of her most painful memories.)

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“So am I,” she replies, and it sounds borderline accusatory.

Bellamy deserves that.

Taking a shuddering breath, he slips his hand into her hair and presses his forehead to hers. He can’t bring himself to kiss her. He doesn’t know if he feels that way—truly, or if it’s just another emotion caught amidst the sea of memories flooding his brain.

Echo in a cage. Echo with white paint on her face and a knife to her belly. Echo reigning in agonised cries as he and Harper hauled the metal door off her—the one she never should have been holding up alone in the first place. (That’s the first time he noticed how hard she pushed herself beyond her limits to prove herself.) His mind is filled with memories of her, from the ground and from the ring and from everything that preceded that first kiss. Like a wound he’s allowed to fester at the back of his mind, it rears its ugly head. He’s been tricking himself into believing it was healing because it was contained, but the press of her lips to his was the key that burned through every lock and chain he’d put on it.

“I forgive you, Echo.”

Bellamy concedes, after three long years.

~*~

The tension between them is different after that. The others notice the change at dinner, but no one’s the wiser it’d seem. When Monty hazards a question the following day, Bellamy shrugs and says: _Nothing, we just cleared the air._

~*~

It’s a matter of days before the muddled waters clear, allowing Bellamy to sort through the debris. As he triages through what remains he finds that the feelings have not gone away but simply morphed into something else. When he tries to construct something new out of the exploded dam, he finds there’s nothing left to compartmentalise. Echo is no longer an isolatable piece. In fact, she never was.

Over the following two nights he dreams of her—of _them_. It starts in a cage. It starts with her sallow face and soft brown eyes. Lovejoy’s body no longer slumped between them when he promises her, he’ll come back. It ends with her lips pressed to his as she promise him that things will be alright.

On the fourth night, it turns into a nightmare that ends with his hands around her throat.

~*~

Bellamy wakes with a start.

Two hours pass before he gives up on sleep entirely.

Reaching for the tablet, he busies himself with diagnostics. Upon seeing the readings, he jumps out of bed and dresses. He leaves his room with such haste that he nearly catapults himself over the bottom ledge of his door. Luckily, he catches himself on the door… with the tablet. It’s unfortunate, and he’ll deal with Raven’s wrath later, but right now he needs to test the communications system.

His hopes and the tablet share something in common: they’re both dashed.

Whatever Bellamy thought he saw on the reports, he must have dreamt it.

It’s been three years, but he still feels it like a punch to the gut.

“Bellamy?”

“FUCK! Echo-Jesus-fucking-Christ-can-you-not-wear-a-bell?”

It comes out in one word, his breath catching in his throat.

A lot of things have changed in three years, but not Echo’s ability to materialise and vanish without a trace. Reaching to cut the static, he smiles. Despite his initial scare, he’s amused by her expression. It’s not the first—and definitely not the last—time she’s been on the receiving end of such words. Even Emori’s trigedasleng yells sound similar.

“Hey,” he amends, voice soft.

He leans back into the leather seat, glad the sun is coming in just so. Her eyes look gold in this light and her chin casts a shadow on her throat, masking the bruises. Bruises that are an abstract rendition of his hands.

“Why are you up?”

“I heard you running down the fall… hall. No. I heard you fall in the hall and running,” she replies.

A smirk tugs on the corner of his mouth despite the colour rising on his cheeks.

“You, ah, heard that, huh?”

Bellamy has never seen Echo rub sleep from her eyes before, or stumble over her words the way she just did. In three years he’s never seen her look so soft. Maybe because she doesn’t allow herself to look pliable and soft when watched. Her back straightens when she catches his eye.

“Is something wrong, Bellamy?”

He knows better than to ruin the moment being maudlin, and yet, there’s a part of him that wonders whether she’d come to him if he told her about his disappointment. It’s not like they’ve spoken about it, not really, not since she caught him at the view port on their 1096th night and promised everything would be okay.

“I can’t sleep,” he says instead.

It’s the truth.

It’s bloody early too.

“I’d offer you sleeping tea, but Monty’s algae is all there is,” she replies.

Bellamy cracks a smile at her deadpan delivery, and the way her yawn sabotages it entirely.

“What about you? Did I wake you?”

“Raven snores,” she says with a shrug.

“I don’t,” he retorts.

“Is that an invitation, Bellamy?”

At this, he pushes himself to his feet.

Her response bolsters his confidence and he reaches to tuck a strand behind her ear.

His touch lingers, palm cupping her cheekbone.

“I can’t promise you’ll get much sleep though,” he amends, his voice barely a whisper.

Something cinches in his chest when she tilts her head into his touch. It’s as close to a verbal RSVP he’s going to get. He means it though. Seeing her like this kindles a flame at the base of his spine. Up close he can see just how dishevelled and bleary-eyed she looks. It also reveals that despite Raven’s snoring, Echo was in fact asleep. He glances down at her body to find her barefoot, and frowns.

“You’ll catch your death,” he admonishes.

“If you’re going to lecture me on proper footwear, Bellamy, do me a favour and float me first.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Murphy.”

“I’d rather have spent it with you, but you were—.”

“Don’t,” he pleads. He glides his hand down her cheek, then past her jawline. He ghosts his fingers across her throat, noticing the way she shudders at his touch. His hand drops to his side.

“We’ll talk about it, at great length and soon, but not now. Now just... be with me.”

“I am. I have been, Bellamy. All this time.”

“I know,” he whispers apologetically, reaching towards her hair once more.

He brushes it over her shoulder and gently cups the back of her arm, stepping closer.

“But I’m here now too,” he murmurs against her lips.

~*~

Sealing promises with kisses becomes their thing, and shortly thereafter the kisses themselves become promises.

_I’ll be back._

_I’ll be careful._

_I’ll wait._

They exchange many kisses and many words, but the ones Echo never utters are: _I’ll be here when you wake up_. It doesn’t bother him at first. They try—and fail—to keep their tryst quiet, at least long enough to figure it out themselves. Their friends know them well-enough to give them the space they need, but when Bellamy leans in to kiss Echo throughout a scene in a movie one night, the entire crew put on their best rendition of disgusted seven-year-olds. It’s fine, because they all laugh, and Bellamy and Echo are adults who excuse themselves. Raven kicks John’s head when he hollers obscene _bow-chicka-bow-wow_ after them. (And Bellamy cuffs him over the ear when he finds out John explained to Echo what he’d meant by it.)

~*~

It doesn’t bother him at first that Echo’s not there when he wakes. It takes months for her not to leave after they’ve kissed for hours on end. It’s when they start to explore each other’s bodies that it bothers him. Watching her leave with swollen lips is one thing but watching her get dressed within seconds of his release makes him feel cheap.

Eventually she understands what he needs and indulges him in post-coital affection. Bellamy gets to fall asleep to her warmth and soon realises they have very different attitudes towards sex. The miscommunication becomes clear when wakes up with his own despite asking her to stay.

~*~

“Stay,” he whispers, breathless between kisses he’s trailing just about anywhere he can reach.

“I am,” she retorts, pulling a little harder on his hair to look at his face.

“No,”—he burrows his face into the crook of her neck— “All night and all morning. I’m sick of waking up alone,” he groans, punctuating each word with a snap of his hips. It’s a sordid way to drive home the point, but he’s sick of it. He’s sick doing things her way and accepting her daft grounder ways. He wants her all to himself. He wants that bleary eyed, dishevelled Echo as much as he wants this writhing devil beneath him. Bellamy wants _all_ of her.

“Okay,” she acquiesces, out of breath.

“Okay?”

“Just,”—she pulls his hair, presses his forehead to hers and stares straight into his soul— “Shof op, Belomi.”

(That’s the night he realises he _may_ have a bit of a trigedasleng kink.)

(It’s also the first night she leaves and comes back.)

(It’s the first morning he gets to introduce her to a custom sadly lost on the ground. After that, he never again has to ask her to stay.)

~*~

(Except for that time after their first and biggest fight.

It’s the one-time Bellamy fucks up so bad even John—in spite of his failing relationship with Emori—swings by to give him advice. It’s the time he’s scorched her with his words and can see their effect more clearly than the tattoos. It’s the time he falls to his knees and wraps his arms around her hips and buries his face into her stomach and practically begs her not to walk away. It’s the time Echo forgives him, and mercifully only makes him wait four days—

—and not three years.

It’s the last time Bellamy asks her stay, because he makes sure he never, ever, _ever_ again makes her feel like she doesn’t belong. To use her own words against her in anger... To throw what might have been her last words—ever—and become the knife that sunk into her tender belly. It should have taken her more than four days.)

(This very fight is the reason why, three years later, when Echo agrees to ‘defect’ Bellamy can barely breathe. It’s why he press his fingers into her skin and attempts to blend her into him, because it’s the only way he can beg her to _stay_.)

~*~

There are morning he wakes with just the smell of her on his skin and her phantom warmth in his bed. Over time he begins to find her elsewhere in his room. Clothes in the corner hamper or on the desk. Weapons stacked on the shelves. Her mug, next to his, on the floor. Her boots, by the door.

Eventually, most mornings Bellamy wakes up to her breath on his nape and her arms around his waist. (He tries to affectionally call her a backpack, but she shoots him down with a look worth a thousand arrows.) Other mornings she’s curled into his chest, mouth slack and drool on her chin.

It takes a year for Echo to move in, officially. And when she does, he leans against his door to watch as she carries the last of her belongings—a book, a patch of deer skin, and a trinket Raven’s built for her as a Unity Day gift—across the hall. From the other end, at the other door, Raven watches as well, a sad smile on her face.

If they blow raspberries at each other before closing their doors, it’s not for Echo to know.


End file.
